Farewell to Marlowe

I picked up Farewell, My Lovely (1975) after seeing Murder, My Sweet. They are both based on the Raymond Chandler story Farewell, My Lovely - They changed the name for the Dick Powell version because they didn't want it to sound like a fluffy romance. This version stars Robert Mitchum and no one would suspect him off being in a fluffy romance.

It starts with Moose Malloy, this time played Jack O'Halloran, a big ex-pug, but no Mike Mazurki. Once again, he takes Marlowe to the place he last saw Velma, 8 years ago. Velma is still as cute as lace pants, but in this version, the place is now a colored joint, which allows for a bit of cynical racism. This is more faithful to the book, although toned donw qite a bit for 1970s audiences. By the way, I re-read the book to compare to these movies.

Here are some differences: In the book, there's a cute girl reporter who helps out. In Murder, she becomes the femme fatale's daughter, which works better, I think. The character is eliminated in Farewell, possibly because Mitchum is too old for that stuff. He's replaced by a newsie, as sort of a sidekick for Marlowe. 

In this version, Amthor is a butch madame, played by Kate Murtagh (the waitress on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America). I don't know if this is an improvement. I like the oddball idea of an evil Spiritual Advisor. Actually, in the book, he turns out to be sort of irrelevant, just mixed up accidentally, Anyway, Mitchum still gets doped, and Murtagh attempts to frame him. But Sylvester Stallone (!) shoots her for knocking around one of the girls he's sweet on, Ranbeaux Smith (!).

Farewell also includes the gambling boat scene, with Anthony Zerbe as the gambling boss. This was in the book, but left out of Murder, because the studio bosses didn't want any trouble from the mobsters ran actual gambling boats. I guess that racket was washed up in the 70s.

The femme fatale in this version was played by Charlotte Rampling. She's certainly as cute as lace pants, but I see her as too refined to be the best Helen Grayle. 

Mitchum makes a tired, tough Marlowe, not as snappy as Powell. Both are great with the patter, both worthy of the title gumshoe. Murder used the framing story of a blinded Powell telling the whole story in an interrogation, which wasn't in the book or in Farewell. In Farewell, Mitchum is kept going my Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, getting a hit in 56 straight games. 

I think I noticed a few times that the later movie copied from the earlier (Jessie Florian's excessive decolletage), but in most cases, it went back to the original book. That book is full of cute expressions, like "crazy as two waltzing mice". "liquor dies painless with me. Doesn't know what hit it", and "cute as lace pants”.